Category "silent-movie"

Origin of the Mustache Twirling Villain

Whenever someone thinks about silent cinema the image of the laughing villain, twirling his mustache, and tying the hapless blonde beauty to the railroad, pops

Silent film created after 1990

As we know, "The Artist" was recognized as the best film of 2012 in the Oscar Awards. Is this the first try to create silent film in last 20 years or have ther

How can I find out if a movie/series is still restricted by copyright?

My understanding is that determining copyright is not always as simple as adding a number of years to the date a movie was first released/a series was first air

How to find the script (screenplay) of old silent movies? [duplicate]

I'm trying to find the script of D. W. Griffith's Birth of a Nation, and it seems that nobody has it on the internet. Is there a movie datab

Was Buster Keaton really Charlie Chaplin's rival?

I found a lot of materials recently researching on silent movies and one of them caught my attention. In the Brazilian wikipedia, an article a

Why didn't silent movies have subtitles?

Why were there no subtitles in the beginning of cinematography in silent movies? I know about intertitles but why were subtitles not common then? Were people

Cop chasing thief silent film trope

I'm looking for an example of a trope I know clearly in my mind but can't find a specific example to. I feel like I've seen it in numerous silent films but can'

How did they make cars fall apart in old movies?

A staple of old Buster Keaton/Laurel and Hardy films is the car that falls completely apart, either when closing one of the doors or even when driving, like so:

How are intertitles (title cards) denoted in silent movie scripts?

Most modern film scripts tend to have very strict formatting with regards to action, characters, and dialogue. Yet I cannot find many silent film scripts which

Did silent film actors actually say their lines or did they simply improvise “dialogue” while being filmed?

Been watching some old Buster Keaton films. And—as is the case with silent films—there are title cards that convey setting, place and even show a fe

Was Broken Blossoms (1919) originally shown with tinted film?

Every copy I've found of Broken Blossoms, the silent film from 1919, has been tinted -- they appear to have been shot in black and white, but then various scene

Was the choice of music part of the creation of silent films?

As I understand it, the music that accompanied silent films in the 1920s was done by having an organist or possibly an orchestra pit in the theaters, playing li